Start as you mean to go on

Many businesses aren’t prepared to effectively respond to a bid. They don’t have supporting assets in place and may rush when deciding what to include in the proposal. Sometimes, they won’t stop to consider whether they should bid at all.
Creating an effective bid takes lots of work. By perfecting your planning and process early, you’re more likely to deliver a tender that rewards your investment.
Acting as your bid planning and writing consultants, we help you overcome whatever bid challenges you have. When you collaborate with BiD Masters, you’re ready for anything.
How we help
Wherever you need support, ask us to get involved early. With a flexible and experienced team on hand, we can step in briefly or help you plan your entire approach to bidding and winning tenders
You may welcome fresh eyes on your current proposals and bid management process. Alternatively, you might want guidance as you prepare to respond to future bidding opportunities.
Business development support
Ahead of bidding, we can help you assess opportunities and prepare for future tender responses. Collaborating with your internal teams, we guide you where it matters.
Business planning
When you don’t know where to start with bidding, or need to assess your capabilities, we can help. You may need to recruit or train people to bid effectively. And should you win new business, it may impact your business requirements. There are many factors to consider before bidding, so let us help you plan from a place of understanding.
Develop promotional collateral
Marketing materials such as websites, brochures, and case studies must be in place (and up to date) before responding to an important tender. We can guide you on priorities and help you develop a library of materials to draw from.
Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) awareness
Many tenders ask for your ESG credentials and use them as part of the scoring system. We can work with you to assess your processes with this in mind. Using examples of recent ESG tender requirements, we can help you understand how to improve your approach to maximise your scoring
Ethics and compliance awareness
A complex area to understand, bids increasingly to require demonstration of ethics compliance before you can qualify to bid. We can help you understand what this means in relation to your upcoming bid opportunity and work with you to draft an acceptable response to ethics and compliance requirements.
Bid decision making
While there may be an opportunity for you to bid, you must first decide whether you want to. Larger organisations might have assessment tools in-house and some may work from ‘gut feel’.
Should you need support deciding whether to bid or not, we offer a scoring tool that analyses various factors to give you a pragmatic point of view. We can work through this together so you make an informed and considered decision.
Bid team support
Once you’ve identified a bidding opportunity, you must plan how to win it. Completing this strategic work, before leaping into bid production, will help you submit a more effective proposal that clearly highlights your key differentiators.
Pursuit planning
Also known as capture planning, ask yourself: “How are we going to win this bid?” Your answer will shape your pursuit plan. Does your current positioning align with the tender you want to win? Have you got the right resources and partnerships to make it work? And do you understand the prospective customer sufficiently?
Prioritising this stage can help your potential customer prefer you before any proposals have been submitted.
This is also the time to clarify ‘win themes’ to shape your proposal. Each one must be a true differentiator – something your competition cannot achieve. By clearly communicating distinctive win themes, your proposal will become more consistent and compelling. Your prospective customer will see your value easily.
We’re on hand to help you create a meaningful pursuit plan and win themes that make your proposal stand out.
Previous bid reviews
Few businesses consistently review past bids to establish ‘lessons learnt’. And yet, this is crucial to help you do better next time. We can support your review process and show you what makes a business winning bid. By understanding what hampered your score last time, you can perform much better on the next bid you submit.
Bid team capability
Before kicking off a bid project, you must assess whether you have the right team in place and whether they have all the skills to deliver it. You may need to engage outside support, and the earlier you involve a third-party, the more value they can provide. Leaving it until a ‘last-minute push’ becomes a headache for everyone.
Process review
Organisations with a robust bid process are more likely to win new business. Should your process fall short, we can assess it and complete a gap analysis before recommending improvements. If your bid process is non-existent, we can help you create one that’s appropriate for your business.
Respond to win
Once you’ve received the RFP, you must assess what’s required and decide how to go forward. We call this ‘responding to win’. And we can help you.
Mock evaluations
Assessing your proposed offering against the prospective customer’s needs is an important step to complete on receiving an RFP. We can provide an independent gap analysis to give you a clear picture.
We can review your bidding progress at other stages too. For example, critiquing your draft proposal against your original plan and interrogating your final proposal against the customer’s objectives and your own business plan.
Proposition development
Most RFPs want to learn about your existing products and services. Few will deviate far from your strengths, that’s why you’re a good fit to bid. Therefore, you can generally establish your proposition at the outset.
Competitive pricing strategy
Winning the business at a price that doesn’t deliver sufficient return is pointless. You also don’t want to price yourself out of the bidding. We can work with you to explore your options and establish what could be a winning price.
Of course, price is only one aspect of your offer. While some prospective customers will inevitably favour the lowest cost, many will look at other factors such as your proven capabilities and the value you offer.
Deliver to succeed
Once you’ve submitted your proposal, there’s still work to be done. These additional touchpoints can make a significant difference to the final decision and early progress. You’re looking to reinforce your proposal and ensure they feel confident about choosing your offer.
Negotiation strategy
Large tenders will first select a ‘preferred supplier’. And that’s just the start. Further negotiations follow around factors such as pricing and due diligence. We can help you prepare for this final bidding stage and support your negotiations where necessary.
Project launch support
You’ve won. Congratulations! But your work is still not done. As your bid team disperses and your implementation team pick up the ropes there’s often a knowledge gap. When we’ve supported your bid we can ease the transition, draft early project deliverables, and ensure the project launches as smoothly as possible.